May 10, 2011

Abbottabadvertising

Just like your local helicopter news team, bloggers are always looking for the local angle.

In assessing last week's news about bin Laden, I think I've found a way to connect it to the ad business.

The Navy Seals, the people who actually did the work, seem to have put in a nearly flawless performance.

On the other hand, all the other parties associated with the raid -- the politicians and their jabbering monkeys -- screwed everything else up royally. They couldn't get their stories straight. Everything they said at the beginning turned out to be wrong. They tripped in their underwear, contradicted each other, and seemed to be making it up as they went along.

Which, of course, reminds me of the ad business.

There are two kinds of ad people. The ones who make the ads, and the ones who stand on the sidelines and tell them how.

The results would usually be a whole lot better if the people who made the ads were just left alone and allowed to do their jobs without the "input" of the executive knuckleheads, the account ringmasters, and the sidewalk sociologists.

Of course, there are some people on the sidelines who do, from time to time, add value. But they are the exception. For the most part, all the jabberers are good for is complicating the living shit out of everything and getting the story wrong.

And just like our feckless politicians, they know how to do everyone's job but their own.

And Speaking Of Knowing Everyone's Job But One's Own...
I'm speaking at Stanford today. Is it ironic that I'm smart enough to be a teacher at a place where I'm not smart enough to be a student? Just askin'.

"Caustic Yet Truthful"

"The Most provocative Man In Advertising"

"Savage Critiques Of Digital Hype"

"Fabulously Irreverent"

CONTACT BOB

Over 60,000 people have watched Bob's talk at Advertising week, Europe

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements."

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business is about sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."